Just one day after the news of Matthew Perry’s tragic passing, one of his oldest friends, Hank Azaria, is opening up.
The 59-year-old Azaria took to Instagram on Sunday, revealing Perry, 54, was ‘the first friend I made in Los Angeles.’
‘When I moved there, I was 21, he was 16. We did a pilot together called Morning Maggie that never saw the light of day, but Matthew and I became really good friends’ Azaria added.
‘We were really more like brothers for a long time. We drank a lot together. We laughed a lot together. We were there for each other in the early days of our careers,’ Azaria added.
‘He was, to me, as funny as he was on Friends, and other things too, in person he was just the funniest man ever,’ Azaria recalled.
Opening up: Just one day after the news of Matthew Perry’s tragic passing , one of his oldest friends, Hank Azaria, is opening up
First friend: The 59-year-old Azaria took to Instagram on Sunday, revealing Perry, 54, was ‘the first friend I made in Los Angeles
‘He’s lived to laugh and every night he was… he was like a genius. He would start to weave comedy threads together, just hanging out,’ Azaria added.
‘A joke here, a joke there, a joke here, a joke there, and then by the end of the night, he’d weave them all together in this like crescendo of hilariy,’ Azaria explained.
He added that, ‘most nights you spent with Matthew you were crying laughing by the end. I really loved him. A lot of us close to him really thought we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago,’ Azaria explained.
‘As he documented in his book, in his autobiography, there was so much suffering. I had to pick up and put down that biography like 11 times, it was so painful for me to read,’ Azaria admitted.
‘It was really… as his friend who loved him, I knew he must be suffering, but the details of it were just devastating,’ Azaria admitted.
He added that he’s been sober for 17 years, and that, ‘the night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in.’
‘The whole first year I was sober, we both went to meetings together, and he was such a great… I got to tell him this, as a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise and he totally helped me get sober,’ Azaria added.
‘And I really wish he could have found it in himself to stay with the sober life more consistently, but as a recovery guy, it was hard to read that too,’ Azaria admitted.
Genius: ‘He’s lived to laugh and every night he was… he was like a genius. He would start to weave comedy threads together, just hanging out,’ Azaria added
Most nights: He added that, ‘most nights you spent with Matthew you were crying laughing by the end. I really loved him. A lot of us close to him really thought we lost him to drugs and alcohol a long time ago,’ Azaria explained
David: Azaria played David, Phoebe’s (Lisa Kudrow) on-and-off love interest in Perry’s breakthrough hit series Friends
‘I just felt so bad. I mean, I knew he had gone in and out for years, he documented it all publicly and then in the book, but it’s heartbreaking for those of us who loved him and knew him really well personally. We just missed him,’ Azaria said.
‘It’s one of the terrible things about this disease is it just takes away the person you love, and, you know, professionally, as an actor, he was so brilliant,’ Azaria said.
‘I just wish I and the world could have gotten what the rest of his career would have been,’ Azaria concluded.
Azaria played David, Phoebe’s (Lisa Kudrow) on-and-off love interest in Perry’s breakthrough hit series Friends.